All I Ever Needed
by LuckyLadybug
Summary: Takes place between the first two Equestria Girls movies. Sunset Shimmer is still adjusting to the whole friendship experience and is still struggling with her inner conflicts and insecurities. After a very involved nightmare, she ponders on her former life in Equestria and how she's changed since coming to the human world.


**My Little Pony: Equestria Girls**

 **All I Ever Needed**

 **By Lucky_Ladybug**

 **Notes: The characters are not mine and the story is! This takes place between the first two movies and is a little exploration of mine into figuring out a backstory for Sunset Shimmer. I know the comics have one, but I don't entirely agree with it or feel it aligns with the information presented in the movies. In the first movie, Celestia said Sunset only went bad when things didn't happen fast enough for her. She also indicated that Sunset abandoned her studies sometime before she went into the mirror for the first time. And Sunset is such a sweetheart in the second movie that I feel she must have also been good as a Pony, until her impatience got the best of her. I also explore the idea of her residency a bit, since we don't have any canon information on that and it's fair game until we do. I may do something in a future story with the mystery hinted at the end.**

 _It was a strange mixture. The sky overhead was the sky of Equestria—beautiful and blue and innocent, with Pegasus Ponies kicking the clouds away. But the scene below was the locker area of Canterlot High in the human world, and she was pressed up against the wall, the target of intimidation by a familiar enemy._

" _Ugh, I can't believe how pathetic you are. You had the crown right on your_ _ **head**_ _and you couldn't even keep hold of it!"_

 _She continued to hold her position at the wall, gripping it defensively with her open palms. "But they had stronger magic than I did. There was nothing I could do!"_

 _Her assailant was most unimpressed by her argument. "Bah! That friendship garbage? How could hearts and rainbows ever be more powerful than what you turned into when you were wearing the crown?" The person turned to the side with folded arms, giving her a sideways glance._

" _I don't know! It's what Princess Celestia always taught, but I didn't believe her. Now I know it's true."_

" _You know nothing!" The bully whipped back to face her, pointing a forefinger at her in emphasis. "It was a trick. It's always a trick. There's no such thing as real friendship. You knew that in Equestria. And now, just because of a little blast of magic, you're ready to turn your back on everything you learned!"_

" _I didn't learn anything except how to beat people down!" She pushed herself away from the wall, angry now. "That's all I've been doing since I abandoned my studies with Princess Celestia. Now I've really seen how horrible I was acting. I don't like the old me. I don't want to be that person anymore!"_

" _Oh, but you'll always 'be her', Sunset Shimmer." The bully stepped into the light. It was she herself, as cruel and as wicked as she had been at Canterlot High up to the point when she had put on the crown. Her green eyes glinted with malice. "I_ _ **am**_ _you! You can't escape that or change that. But maybe you'd rather not be a person at all. Maybe you'd rather go back to Equestria and start all over again as Princess Celestia's student from scratch!_

" _Of course, there's no way she would take you back. If you ever go back to Equestria, you'll be kicked out and have to come back here. Not that there's anything for you here, either. No one really wants to be your friend. After what we did, how can you blame them?"_

 _She flinched. "I don't know how they can want me around. But Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity have been good to me! Everyone else in the school just ignores me altogether!"_

" _While these girls say Hello to you and talk to you. Isn't that nice."_

" _And I'm going to a sleepover at Pinkie Pie's house tomorrow," she insisted._

" _I wonder if Rainbow Dash will finally invite you to the band then. Don't you think it's strange that all the others are in the band now, except you? They talk about it around you, and practice around you, and never once do they ever so much as ask if you want to be in it. It's like it doesn't even occur to them that maybe you're interested and feeling left out. On the other hand, is it really even logical that they wouldn't have thought of that? You're the only steady member of their group who hasn't been asked. Maybe they just pretend not to know your feelings because they don't want you there."_

 _She looked away. "They probably think I couldn't do anything anyway, because I didn't start life as a human."_

" _But you adjusted so fast. And you like being a human better than you liked being a Pony, don't you? There's a lot of things we can do that they don't know about. It wouldn't matter even if they did; none of them will ever ask you to join the band. Sure, they can say Hello to you or invite you to a little party now and then, but that's just a short-term thing. Inviting you to be in a band, well, that's a long-term investment. And they just don't trust you enough for that. You know what I think?"_

" _No, and I really don't care," she snapped._

" _I think you should teach them all a lesson." Suddenly the other her shot her hand into what had been a metal locker but was now a glass case. Taking out Twilight Sparkle's crown, she started to place it on her head._

" _No!" Sunset Shimmer screamed. She lunged, trying to grab the beautiful gold and rose tiara before it was too late._

 _Instead she was pushed back. The other her lowered the crown onto her head. In an instant, the horrifying transformation began to warp and twist her body. Sunset watched in sickened disbelief, not wanting to watch but unable to look away. She had never really seen what she had looked like as a she-demon. Now the sight of the blood-red skin and the black eyes made her shrink in horror._

" _You know what? I think I'll teach_ _ **you**_ _a lesson first!" the demon cried. "You'll never forget who's in charge again!"_

 _A beam of energy shot out from her claws. Sunset collapsed to the floor, unable to stand. But it wasn't because the beam had weakened her; she had been transformed back to her Pony body._

 _She backed up against the wall again, angry but not defeated. "That was a stupid thing to do!" she snapped. "You've given me my magic back."_

" _Oh yes, your magic." The demon's mocking voice was not encouraging. "But the thing is,_ _ **your**_ _magic is no match for_ _ **my**_ _magic. I'm far more powerful than you'll ever be, especially now that you've given into the weakness of friendship!"_

 _Sunset wasn't listening. She responded with a burst of energy from her horn, blasting the demon against the far wall. But even as she did, Sunset slammed against the wall behind her._

 _A mad cackle echoed up and down the halls of Canterlot High as the demon got to her feet. "You fool! Don't you even realize what happened? You can't attack me without hurting yourself!"_

" _What? No!" Sunset struggled to get to her feet. "That doesn't make sense. You should've got hurt when you blasted me!"_

" _My superior power prevented that from happening." The demon advanced on her, spreading the leathery wings wide. "There is nothing you can do to stop me. And as a Pony, you don't belong here at Canterlot High. You're just going to have to go back."_

 _The floor opened up underneath Sunset and she plunged with a scream, down, down, through the layers of the school and towards the mirror lying at the bottom._

" _Help!" she pleaded, holding out a hoof to each friend as she fell past. "I don't want to go back. And I can't leave that demon here! You'll all suffer!"_

" _We can deal with it," Applejack said coldly._

" _You don't belong here," Rainbow Dash added._

" _Go home, Sunset Shimmer," said Rarity._

" _Yeah! Get out of here so we can party!" Pinkie Pie cried._

 _Fluttershy was the last one she saw before reaching the mirror. In desperation, Sunset reached out to her. "Fluttershy, please! You won't leave me behind, will you?!"_

 _Some regret flickered in Fluttershy's eyes, but then she turned away. "I'm sorry, Sunset Shimmer. It's better if you go."_

 _She fell through the mirror in the next instant. It shattered behind her, the pieces swirling through space and time before flying back into the portal as it closed forever._

 _She could never go back. . . ._

 _She could never go home. . . ._

Sunset Shimmer sat up straight in bed, breathing heavily, her green eyes wide and horrified. As the reality of her darkened room sank in, she slumped back into the pillows with a groan. It wasn't the first nightmare she'd had since the night her life had changed for good, but it was the most involving and frightening. It would take a while before she could calm down enough to get back to sleep.

Pushing back the covers, she got out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen. With a sigh she plopped down at the table and swept her long titian locks away from her face.

Most girls, humans and Ponies both, probably had family members to comfort them when they awakened from nightmares. Sunset was alone here, and for all intents and purposes, she had been alone in Equestria, too.

She frowned to herself. She had always wanted to be the best, but she had never really known what that meant. It had been her father who had drilled it into her that she could only be the best if she was accepted as Princess Celestia's student and became the top-rated pupil. She had hated that pressure, but even after she had moved out, the pressure had stayed with her. He had pounded it into her so much that she had started pressuring herself the same way and could not let up.

Life had been difficult in Canterlot in many ways. The bullying that had started when she was a tiny filly had followed her into adulthood. Her father hadn't been much help with that, telling her that she should use her magic to retaliate and beat the bullies back. She hadn't wanted to do that, knowing she could get in trouble for misusing her magic, but one day the torment had been too much and she had given in, blasting her torturers several feet back. They had left her alone after that, terrified of her, but the damage had been done and she had been emotionally scarred. She would never let anyone bully her again.

At least where Princess Celestia was concerned, things had gone so well, at least for a time. Sunset had become one of the top students in the class, excelling at magic and the other subjects the Princess took particular note of. When she had decided to take Sunset under her wing as her personal student, Sunset couldn't have been happier. Even without wings, she had been ready to levitate that day.

It had been so fun for a while. She had enthusiastically handled all the assignments she was given, diving right in and getting a real hooves-on experience instead of just reading the assigned material. Princess Celestia had been very impressed with her experiments and other research. Still, for some reason, she had seemed worried. When asked, she had never said why.

And then Sunset had started to change over time. It had just seemed to her that things were moving so slowly, when they should have moved far quicker after the Princess had taken her in. How could she learn to be the best if she wasn't being given a fair chance to do so? She _knew_ she had it in her, yet Princess Celestia hadn't appeared to trust her with the higher magic and more complex spells. The bitterness and despair she had felt over that had started to warp her ideals and even her heart.

Wearily, she got up from the table and crossed to the fridge. Pinkie had baked a special batch of cookies for everyone and had handed them out that day. Sunset had eaten a couple and taken the rest home for a late-night snack. She brought them out now and set them on the table while she went to pour a glass of milk.

Princess Celestia had tried to tell her that friendship was the most powerful magic of all. Without that, she wouldn't be able to achieve the higher magic. But she hadn't believed it, not after the bullying she had endured and the other grim examples of "friendship" she had seen in her life. As far as she had been concerned, friendship wasn't real. Ponies only made friends when they wanted something from someone else. They dumped their friends as soon as they had it. She had heard so many supposed friends saying cruel things behind each other's backs. No, friendship definitely wasn't for her, and if Princess Celestia insisted that was the only path to the higher magic, Sunset had known she had to be wrong.

Sorrow filled her eyes as she slowly munched on the delicious person-shaped cookie. She still remembered every horrible word of that argument with Princess Celestia. She _knew_ there had to be another path, because friendship was trash, not magic, and Celestia was keeping it from her for some reason. Celestia just didn't trust her! Well, she would find the other paths to that magic, and she didn't need Celestia's help to do it. And she certainly wasn't going to make friends just for the purpose of using them to get more magic!

That had been the day she had abandoned her studies. Yet, as she had run out of the palace in tears, ignoring Celestia calling after her, she had made sure to pack the special communications diary in her saddlebag along with all of her books on magic and spells.

She had roamed Equestria for a while, following leads and speaking to every magically inclined Pony she met. Finally she had been put on the trail of the mirror, which was definitely a secret Celestia had been keeping from her. She had returned to the palace, filled with months of bitterness and hurt boiling in her heart, and had begun a search for the mirror. It was supposed to lead to some distant land, according to legend. If it did, maybe that was where she needed to be—a place to start over fresh.

Somehow Celestia had known what she had been up to. She had been waiting in the room with the mirror, hoping to reason with her former student. She had even said it was commendable that Sunset didn't want to use anyone, although that wasn't at all what Celestia had meant when she had talked of friendship being the only path to the higher magic. But by that point Sunset had been too filled with anger to listen to any of it. She had dived into the mirror before Celestia had been able to stop her.

Since the portal only opened every 30 moons, it was curious that it had actually been open when she had leaped in. She had taken that as a sign that she was meant to go to the other world.

Maybe she had. She hadn't been ready to learn what she needed to know in Equestria.

She hadn't been ready when she had first arrived in the human world, either. Filled with bitterness and her burning drive to be the best, she had set about making a name for herself at Canterlot High. She wouldn't be beaten down and betrayed and tricked as she had been in Equestria. She had bullied everyone at the school. She had even latched onto the human counterparts of Twilight Sparkle's friends, cleverly and cruelly breaking up their friendships by making them think they were all being thoughtless and unkind to each other.

Sunset groaned, slumping on the table. Aside from turning into a raging she-demon, that was what she regretted most. Why had she even done it? What had been the point? Had she thought they were all using each other and didn't really care and she had wanted to prove it? Or had she had even the slightest hint that they were really friends and she had been jealous? Maybe she had wanted to break them up because they had something she didn't.

It was ironic, really. She had abandoned her studies at least partially over not wanting to use others to get ahead, but when she had arrived at Canterlot High, that was exactly what she had done. By that time, she had come to believe that goodness was a joke just as much as friendship was.

How could she ever expect those girls would want her to be a part of their band? It bowled her over as it was that they were even willing to associate with her at all. What she had done, she felt, was unforgivable. Yet they had forgiven her, somehow, someway. They saw that she sincerely wanted to change.

And now she knew what Princess Celestia had really meant about friendship being the strongest magic. She hadn't been talking about using anyone to get what was wanted. That wouldn't have even worked. It was only pure, true friendship that created that magic. That was what Sunset had seen that night, when she had tried to blast Twilight in a mad frenzy and the other girls had rushed to protect her.

She had never been as shocked in her life as she was when the girls suddenly gained Pony ears and ponytails and a stunning burst of magic from the crown as it reacted to their unselfish act. They had rescued the students from her mind-control and reversed the transformations on Snips, Snails, and her, leaving her in literally the sorriest state she had ever been. That one moment had been her epiphany. It had changed her life. The goodness she had locked away had come back and she couldn't believe all the horrible things she had done, both here and in Equestria.

She still didn't know how she would ever begin to make up for any of it. She was trying so hard to be good, but of course the students didn't trust her, after years of her cruelty. Sometimes it was hard not to slip back, but her guilt and sorrow and her desire to learn about friendship trumped any time she felt the temptation to be bad. And she could hardly bear to think of how she had hurt Celestia.

Part of her wished that she could go back, just for a visit, and talk to her and apologize. Maybe the next time the portal was open, she would. Maybe she would even visit her father too, just for a short time.

But she didn't want to live in that world, not anymore. In her nightmare, she had thought of this world as home, and she knew she really did. She felt a sense of belonging in the human world that she had never really felt in Equestria. She had adjusted to being human so easily, as though it was what she had always been meant to be. And here was where she was learning about friendship. She wanted to stay.

She sat up straight again, reaching for the glass of milk. One thing that had puzzled her was the age differences between the worlds. In Equestria, she was old enough to live on her own and be considered an adult. But by this land's standards, she was not yet of legal age. Maybe it was more because of how humans and Ponies viewed ages, rather than the lands themselves being different.

Still, she had tried to use her Pony age and her knowledge from Equestria to her advantage. But despite her attempts to fool the real estate man into thinking she was at least 18 and could live on her own, she knew that wasn't why he had let her take the house she had found and wanted. He had acted so strange, as though the house was supposed to be hers. He had even told her it was already paid off and she could move right in. At the time, she had thought in terms of Equestrian money and houses and how the Ponies did business, but now that she knew how things worked here, she knew something was very odd. If the guy hadn't been conning her, and after all this time she didn't think he was, maybe the house really belonged to the Sunset Shimmer who was native to this world, if there was one. She had tried to research that more than once, but had come up with a blank.

If there wasn't another Sunset Shimmer, though, what in the world did that mean? Everyone was supposed to have a human counterpart, as far as she knew. If she was the exception, there had to be a reason, just like there had to be a reason why the other girls Ponied up when they played music.

And just like there had to be a reason why the real estate man had acted like he had been expecting her and the house was all hers. If she wasn't afraid of giving herself away, she would go and ask him why he had done that.

Maybe she should chance it anyway. She could probably think of some good cover story. She would really like to know not only what the deal was with her and the house, but also whether she needed to worry that someday someone would show up to claim it as hers.

Finished with her snack, she rinsed the glass and headed back to the bedroom. She still had some demons to work out, but maybe now she could sleep without nightmares. Or if this one came back, maybe she could fight back with her renewed sense of belonging and purpose. Her nightmares were, after all, a product of her own insecurities. One part of living a new life was getting past those feelings and learning to not only live with herself, but to forgive and love herself. She would get there eventually.

Even if she continued feeling sad over being left out.


End file.
